General Chat

Thanks Marjery :)

Wow, Aunty Sherlock - I have to admit it is a very very slow process. However, it has been well worth it so far. For years I have had a photograph which I couldn't identify. Whilst scanning in another photograph I noticed the same lady next to my grandfather in a large group photo of wedding. I went back to the original photograph where the lady was outside her front door After I blew up the photograph, I noticed that her address was in chalk over the door. From this I was able to check this against an an address for my grandad's first wife who died very young.

Now i have a name to a face and a face to a name. :)

Strangely enough on the same wedding photograph I found 2 previously unidentified relatives (which were on another photograph which I identified a few years back with the aid of a marriage certificate I bought). So I now suspect that the wedding was from a particular branch of the family.

I also have a time frame to search in as I know when my grandfather's wife died. So fingers crossed I can find something.

The way to make coloured photos last is to have black and white copies made of them or else they fade.

Hi SRS. In January this year I completed what you are contemplating. I had a plastic crate of 47 years of photographs, and that does not include a pile of ancestor photos about which I had dim memories and yes I still have some of those unidentified.

I now have 19 photograph albums sitting on the shelf. Occasionally I take one of those albums, remove some of the photos and scan then into my Ancestry tree. Most of these photos I must admit come from the ancestor albums.

Compiling the albums took about 12 to 14 months working for at least two to three hours every day. Well as near as possible to every day. I would come home from work, have tea and then sit at the coffee table in the lounge surrounded by photos.

I started by taking piles of the photos out of the crate, turning them face down on the table and sorting them according to the dates on the back (if I was very lucky), or the brand name or photo numbers on the back. I then put a rubber band around the piles of photos of similar type. Then I started putting the photos into chronological order. This was done by looking at the age of the children, where we lived, what vehicles we were driving, where we were working, etc ,etc. In fact I used any indicators at all to establish the age of the photos. At one stage I wrote to the motor registration branch for the dates we registered certain vehicles to establish the year of the photos.

When I had them in some order I started putting them into albums. I did not use the pocket albums because I wanted to put in descriptions of the photos and the people in them. I typed out the information onto sticky labels and put those in the albums next to relevant photos.

And what happened when 97% of the photos in the crate had been identified, placed in albums and descriptors added........... Why, I became interested in family history, what else??!!!

lol, that's true Hayley :)))

Perhaps you could rephotograph them with a digital camera, invest in a scanner or borrow one ?

I'm surprised one of your staff hasn't offered to do it for you. They are getting quite lax in my opinion ;)

you know I think I maybe anyway photo's or not :))


I ant got a scanner :(((

Get scanning them in then Hayley :)

It's a shame, they should last forever, you have the right to be immortalised ;)

I remember reading somewhere that colour photos will only last for about 50yrs ......well I dont want that to happen I want my pics to last forever so my GGGGrandchilden can say awwwww there is Nana Hayley who was 39yrs old for over 25ys isnt she stunning :)

NOOOO Hayley - someone was only telling me that discs don't last. Also what happens if they get scratched?

Someone I know lost loads of photos because she something happened to her computer.

Technology changes whereas paper sometimes lasts. It's best to keep both.

Sue, that's lovely :)) What a good idea.

I like photos in albums too Hayley. OH likes to keep them on the computer and back them up with a disc but I still get them printed.

I do scrapbooking and have a lot of my old photos in "heritage" albums together with copies of census returns that I have torn and burnts along the edges to make them look old.

The grandkids have their own albums. The call them their "special" books and alway ask to look at them when they visit. When we visit our eldest grandson we take his book with us. The last visit he asked why I made the book for him and when I asked him what he thought the reason was he said "because I'm special and you love me very much". I told him that's exactly why:-))

Sue xx

I have a big box of photos and about 12 albums all the children have their own from babies th youngest does have more sadly.....OH wants to transfer the lot to dics and get rid of them I say NOOOOOOOO

and there's some ugly looking babies that I don't even know. I usually say that all babies are beautiful but having seen some of these, I'm changing my mind.

Alas there's also photographs of people (probably family) that I can't identify (and probably never will)

There's some photographs that I can't decide which side of the family they are from.

There's some relatively recent photographs of meie within the last 10 or 15 years before that I can't even remember seeing before (and that was before the night out lol).

There's some photographs of places that I've been to and the odd one I can't even identify the holiday.

It's going to be a long haul scanning, labelling and putting these into albums. It's the reason why I've put it off until now.